Wednesday, October 10, 2012

With Halloween right around the corner, parents and children everywhere are searching for just the right ways that they can best turn it into a spooky fun holiday.

This year, The Jim Henson Company has made it even easier to do just that with everyone's favorite... Dinosaur Train!

An Emmy-nominated and Parents' Choice Silver Honor TV series, Dinosaur Train is one of the top ten shows for kids ages 2 to 5. Young viewers join Buddy and his adoptive family of Pteranodons on whimsical adventures through prehistoric jungles, swamps, volcanoes and oceans as they unearth basic concepts in natural science, natural history and paleontology.

The Dinosaur Train is a colorful locomotive, customized to accommodate all kinds of dinosaurs, and it has the ability to visit the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous worlds, while the Train's conductor, a knowledgeable Troodon, provides passengers with fascinating facts along the way.

During the week of October 15, October 22 and on October 31 (check your local listings), Dinosaur Train is airing Halloween-themed episodes on PBS Kids to get in the spooky spirit:

In Haunted Roundhouse, dad takes the kids on a special Night Train to Troodon Town, where the Troodons have decorated their Roundhouse into a "haunted house" for a spooky party. The kids end up meeting a strange new nocturnal creature – a mammal named Vlad Volaticotherium, who was hiding in the roundhouse trying to get some sleep.

In Big Pond Pumpkin Patch, the Pteranodon family learns more about the customs of their neighbors, the Lambeosaurus family, when they are invited for the first time to accompany them to the Big Pond to celebrate "Gourd Day" – a kind of Mesozoic Halloween. The kids see their first pumpkins, and Larry Lambeosaurus even shows the family how to hollow them out and carve faces into them.

In this tale, Mr. Pteranodon takes Buddy and Tiny on a nighttime trip to the Big Pond for a spooky nature walk. Mr. Pteranodon and the conductor insist they can't be scared, but when the conductor's mom jumps out at them, everyone gets a good scare! This simple storybook (recommended for ages 4-8) is perfect for read-aloud fun and retails for $3.99.

But what would Halloween be without costumes?

If you're feeling adventurous, this year you can muster up a great deal of talent and follow the directions from Jim Henson's Creature Shop to create a Buddy costume right at home...

Each Dinosaur Train costume is made up of soft fabric to enhance comfort while wearing them, and is created in vibrant colors and realistic design patterns to make toddlers look and feel like a dinosaur train character!

The colorful Buddy costume includes the orange colored T-Rex jumpsuit, Buddy the dinosaur hood, and the shoe covers. The colorful Tiny costume includes the green colored Pteranodon jumpsuit, Tiny the dinosaur hood, and green shoe covers. Both costumes are available for toddlers ages 3-4, and children ages 4-6 and retail from $34.99 – $39.99.

And altogether, these costumes couldn't be much cuter! We love the way that the fabric doesn't bother sensitive skin, while all of the details really make it clear that this isn't just any old dinosaur, this is truly Tiny!

Little Sister B couldn't be more excited to be able to transform into her dinosaur pal quickly and easily, while I appreciate that this costume really could be worn for trick-or-treating and help keep her warm against the cool Midwest weather.

Both of these great Dinosaur Train costumes are available at various retail locations and online stores across the U.S. (California Costumes offers a list of online stores as well). If you have a young fan in your life, they'll be more than excited to wear one of these for Halloween and beyond!

Find out much more about how you can get in the Dinosaur Train spirit this Halloween by visiting Dinosaur Train online and on Facebook, as well as connecting with PBS Kids on Facebook and Twitter and The Jim Henson Company on Facebook and Twitter.

Other than the Dinosaur Train costume and book that I was provided to facilitate my review, I was not compensated or enticed to do this review in any way. This post is solely my honest opinion of these products.